Crazy Idea Of The Month: Allowing Patents On Mathematics

from the aren't-things-bad-enough? dept

It would be something of an understatement to say that people have strong opinions about patents. But as Techdirt has reported, there's a growing consensus that software patents in particular aren't working -- James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer have written an entire book, "Patent Failure", about how bad things are there, and why it's happening in this area rather than elsewhere.

One of the key problems is that software patents are essentially patents on mathematical algorithms -- sets of instructions for carrying out a calculation. Since it has long been a principle that you can't patent mathematical formulae or laws of nature, there is a tension there: if software is just mathematics, why should you be able to patent it at all? New Scientist points to an interesting article in the April 2013 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, in which David A. Edwards
proposes a radical way of solving that conundrum (pdf):

At present, only those things which are made by man are patentable. Thus, the courts have allowed new forms of bacteria which have been engineered to have useful properties using recombinant DNA techniques to be patented but would not allow such a bacterium to be patented if it were naturally occurring even if it were newly discovered. This is the basis for the nonpatentability of computer programs. They are algorithms, which are essentially mathematical formulas, which -- as everyone knows -- are "eternal" and hence discovered by man and not created by him. This argument which, to say the least, is philosophically controversial, leads to our present unfortunate policy. From an economic point of view, there is no rationale for distinguishing between discovery and invention, and we would advocate dropping entirely any subject matter restrictions whatsoever on what can be patented. One should be able to patent anything not previously known to man.

In particular, he believes it should be possible to patent mathematics, and hence software.

One of his arguments is that this would spur people to make more discoveries. But that presupposes mathematicians aren't trying to do that now for glory, peer esteem and tenure, but there's no evidence to suggest that. The same argument is sometimes made in support of software patents -- that they stimulate the production of more software. But that overlooks the fact that the computer industry thrived for decades before the introduction of software patents, and that companies like Microsoft grew into hugely profitable enterprises without them.

In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." Mr. Gates worried that "some large company will patent some obvious thing" and use the patent to "take as much of our profits as they want."

In the smartphone industry alone, according to a Stanford University analysis, as much as $20 billion was spent on patent litigation and patent purchases in the last two years -- an amount equal to eight Mars rover missions. Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings.

That's bad enough for huge companies with deep pockets; it would be even worse for universities on tight budgets which might suddenly find themselves sued for using mathematical formulae without permission -- a ludicrous situation. Edwards seems to be aware that this is a problem, and tries to address it as follows:

Since patents only give control over the commercial applications of his or her discovery or invention to the patentee, granting patents on mathematical formulas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena would have no negative side effects on pure science.

In 2002, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dramatically limited the scope of the research exemption in Madey v. Duke University, 307 F.3d 1351, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2002). The court did not reject the defense, but left only a "very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense" for "amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry." The court also precludes the defense where, regardless of profit motive, the research was done "in furtherance of the alleged infringer's legitimate business." In the case of a research university like Duke University, the court held that the alleged use was in furtherance of its legitimate business, and thus the defense was inapplicable.

Clearly, there is huge scope for inventive lawyers (mathematical trolls?) to bring lawsuits against academics here, which would inevitably have a chilling effect on "pure science". Far from helping resolve the problems we have today with software patents, extending patentability to the mathematics that underlies programming would simply spread the misery wider, and make the lawyers richer.

If anything mus be patented then it should be the damned EXECUTION of the project not the idea itself. Patenting mathematics is a complete idiocy. If you go back in history most mathematical advancements (that often lead to solutions in all sorts of fields including but not limited to technology) came from people playing around with what already existed. There are examples where mathematical structures were developed that seemed to be useless at first but were used to develop very important structures that changed a lot of things (I'm thinking Benoit Mandelbrot out of the top of my head as a recent example).

It just takes a small historic analysis to see that scientific development only thrived because there was freedom to build on whatever. Intellectual property makes bright minds spend energy with legal issues that were not there in the past.

If anything mus be patented then it should be the damned EXECUTION of the project not the idea itself. Patenting mathematics is a complete idiocy. If you go back in history most mathematical advancements (that often lead to solutions in all sorts of fields including but not limited to technology) came from people playing around with what already existed. There are examples where mathematical structures were developed that seemed to be useless at first but were used to develop very important structures that changed a lot of things (I'm thinking Benoit Mandelbrot out of the top of my head as a recent example).

It just takes a small historic analysis to see that scientific development only thrived because there was freedom to build on whatever. Intellectual property makes bright minds spend energy with legal issues that were not there in the past.

I can see out now...

Just to point out the idiocy here, the very reason for the calculus wars was the fact that Newton was an a-hole. He didn't like that someone else was smarter than him to create calculus and used his position to constantly berate anyone that agreed with his competition.

But if he could have patented math for the calculus equations he kept in his drawer, I'm sure he would have. He would have also claimed that only he knew how derivatives worked.

Honestly, Newton isn't getting any richer off his discoveries. Why should anyone else get rich off of patenting math?

good maths :D

If we define x as the number of stupid laws, and y as the number of stupid lawmakers, and z the number of lawyers required to deal with x, (carry the pi...) we find that we could save a whole boatload of money by eliminating x, y and z.

Funny

Funny thing is - I take his argumetn about the impossibility of distinguishing between "discoveries" and "inventions" and I can't disagree with any of it. The only thing is - I come to the exact opposite conclusion: NOTHING should be patentable.

What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

"Bill Gates wrote, "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

First, NO it wouldn't, Microsoft could have licensed the patents, and there'd have been more equitable distribution of the rewards.

Instead of Gates getting income from all the wonder that he did NOT invent. Gates alone probably got more from the computer revolution than ALL the engineers of the entire 20th century who developed the essentials. Far as I know, Gates didn't invent ANYTHING, just adapted what was already extant. So it's no wonder that HE'S against patents.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm for software patents. Two items will cure it: disallow software patents and steeply progressive income taxes to limit how much second-handers like Gates can get.

Mathematical sarcasm

Anyone remember the guy who patented some formula to square a circle, but it only worked if pi=3? So then he went and introduced a bill to the Indiana state legislature to legally redefine the constant pi to make his shitty math work, so he could charge royalties to schools by forcing them to use his patented formula to do math.

Re: I can see out now...

He didn't like that someone else was smarter than him to create calculus and used his position to constantly berate anyone that agreed with his competition.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz? ;)

Thank God there weren't math patents back then because both Newton and Leibniz had access to earlier developments on that field. None of them did anything entirely novel. And all that was possible due to early 'inventions' from René Descartes. And what did Descartes do? Put damned axis in 90° angle and called them abscissa and ordinate axis. Genial and yet obvious if you think about it. Ideas should never be patented. Ever. Executions maybe.

Re: What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

First, NO it wouldn't, Microsoft could have licensed the patents, and there'd have been more equitable distribution of the rewards.

Because everybody has deep pockets and plenty of time and energy to worry and deal with a broken system right?

Instead of Gates getting income from all the wonder that he did NOT invent... Gates didn't invent ANYTHING, just adapted what was already extant.

Tell me how it is a bad thing to get something and adapt so people can easily and efficiently use. Thanks to the fact that it wasn't that bad back then he managed to do it. Ironically Microsoft is among the huge corporations that run around suing and putting awesome startups out of business with patent law.

Two items will cure it: disallow software patents and steeply progressive income taxes to limit how much second-handers like Gates can get.

Nice, the rest of the comment seems to be an attack on the article. You are incoherent. Other than that I agree with disallowing software patents (and probably most patents) but steep taxes alone won't do a thing other than make companies go to where the taxes are lower.

There are actually only a few cases where mathematics apply to patents...but none of them make their creators any money. My uncle co-created Basein Theory in Statistics and Marketing . It is very useful in predicting potential outcomes of financial decisions. These patents in theory of mathematics are public domain. Nobody but the people who publish text books on the subject make money off of these algorithms and it saddens me that people wish to patent troll on them as these types of algorithms tend to help humanity.

Re: Re: I can see out now...

Well, as far as we can figure out from the historical records, Newton did discover major portions of the calculus. Then he didn't publish his results. Leibniz independently discovered the calculus a bit later, and he did publish his work.

Given that the US patent system is first-to-file, not first-to-invent, Newton would have been completely out of luck if he'd tried to patent the calculus. On the other hand, academia is already first-to-publish and not first-to-discover, which is why we call it the calculus and not the "fluxions".

Re: Re: What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

Back in the 60s, if you made a million dollars, the tax rate was 90%.

You remember the 60s, don't you? NASA, great employment, booming economy, manufacturing plants all over America, no call centers...

I don't remember companies moving overseas back then. That didn't start until the late 70s. Companies WERE starting to move west and south in America by the end of the 60s because they were trying to shed unions, but that was just more greed. It didn't have anything to do with the tax rate. Companies were focused on a skilled labor force back then. Now it is just warm bodies.

In fact, creation is precisely the re-arrangement of materials into a new and more valuable form. Building is precisely the assembly of pre-existing materials to form a structure that didn’t exist before.

2. "When an alleged creator pays for the goods and services of other individuals, he has actually stolen them from that anonymous collective which is “society.”

(The artist who buys his pigments in an art-supply store has actually appropriated them from “society” –including the welfare recipients he is taxed to support.)

In fact, an individual owns the goods and services he acquires in voluntary trade with other individuals. The services supplied by government...public “education” -are funded by taxes paid for by individuals (and almost half of “society” pays no income tax).

Truth: The knowledge a creator uses was discovered by specific individuals, not by “society.” There is no collective discovery and society has no brain."

One of the key problems is that software patents are essentially patents on mathematical algorithms -- sets of instructions for carrying out a calculation. Since it has long been a principle that you can't patent mathematical formulae or laws of nature,

You cant patent E=MC2 but you can patent the design of a nuclear power plant, you cannot patent "water" but you can patent a type of steam engine.

cant patent a circle (a mathematical entity) but you can patent a type of wheel that happens to be a circle.

You cant patent software, but you can patent a process or design or machine that is comprised of software.

you cant patent wood, but you can patent the design of something that is made from wood.

you patent a METHOD of doing some function, not the function itself.

therefore you patent a method of turning steam into motive power, you do not patent steam, or the generation of power.

it's amazing how poor an understanding of what a patent actually is displayed here, it's a shame coming from a web site that professes to know better.

Re: Re: What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

he did not invent clothes, but he contributes to the massive amount of wealth to a lot of people because he uses clothes, just like thousands or millions of people making a living making, or selling or wearing clothes.

all because people like blue and yourself, even though you did not invent something has a much higher quality of life because someone else did.

Gates pays license fees for the patents he himself did not invent, he also makes a lot of money by creating a market where many, many other people can create wealth, income, or function from the things that have made bill gates a billionair.

So if you run a small computer shop, you make enough money to own your house, feed your family you are making a living off someone because someone else was willing and able to use patents to provide you a valuable service or product or market.

Re: Lying Collectivists argument

Edison did not invent the electric light bulb, he invented A METHOD OF GENERATING LIGHT USING ELECTRICITY.

A method not THE ONLY method.

His "idea" was "to turn electricity into light" he did not patent that idea, you cannot patent idea's, and idea's (without application of a method) IS NOTHING.

Generating light from electricity can be reduced to mathematics, watts, volts, amps, lumens, degrees, power and all be expressed in formula's. Edison also did not patent ohms law, or the equations of ohms law.

He did not patent the idea of "electricity to light", or the light bulb, or the natural physics and maths that applies to electricity and light, he just invented A METHOD for producing light using electricity.

Re: Re: Re: What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

Not to mention something called Vietnam, massive protests, presidents assassinated, being beaten into outer space by the Russians, Cuban missile crisis, and almost the destruction of the human race, oh yea, The Bay of Pigs, assignation of Martin Luther King, African Americans given the vote !!! Cold war with Russia and china, skate boards and yo-yo's, Mr Ed and "bewitched"

Re: Re: Re: I can see out now...

The problem with maths and software, there are many ways of describing the same thing. This makes it difficult for a patent examiner to determine whether or not a method has been patented before. Note that it is trivial to rename variables, re-order operation etc. Maths patents would be even worse that software patents, especially given variations in notation and presentation.
Just because two descriptions look different does not mean that they describe a fundamentally different method.

Re: Re: Re: Re: I can see out now...

But you shouldn't be able to patent 'the petrol engine' - you should just be able to patent a particular implementation. Just look at the competition over the electric light bulb... ("Edison took years to see the light!" ;)

Re: Re: Re: What Bill Gates means is HE would have had to PAY THE CREATORS!

The error is in thinking that *only* patented products are useful for this. Are the table and chair used patented? No, but they are a rather important element of a computer shop's work. What about the front window, or shelves? Patenting random crap has really little effect on improving life overall.

Re: Lying Collectivists argument

Wow, a typical pile of Randian bollocks. They seem to have forgotten that society is made up of individuals, and you owe everything you are to both the individuals you are exposed to, and society as a whole.

Re:

What's depressing is that those people *granting* the patent can't tell the difference between the method and the entity (just look at 'design' patents!) and that's what worries us - because we can see how it could be abused, and therefore how it *will* be abused, based on past and current abuses of the existing system.

Once you start patenting 'nature' that you have discovered, then you really open up major cans of worms - just look at the mess there is with medical diagnostics. Great, so there's a cure for a form of cancer - but the cancer, the diagnostics and the cure are 'locked up' and no-one can 'improve' on them because that's "felony interference with a (poor) business model".

Re: Re: Illegal numbers

Re: Re:

If you build a calculator and patent the machine design, ok, I understand that.

But if you build a computer program that works like a calculator, people can patent a "system that performs mathematical calculations with a button interface". That's ridiculous, because the patent covers all program designs that fit the definition, not just the program that was developed.

Like the Anon says, you shouldn't be abled to patent an idea. Like Niall says, it's happening right now.

You would or could of course A METHOD OF GENERATING POWER BY USING STEAM, or a "Method of generating light using electricity.

As you would patent "a method of performing calculations using electronics and software".

Every software program can be realised in hardware, that means all software functions can be created using discrete logic like AND, OR, NOR gates. And often is, still is. It IS THE METHOD of achieving a result that you patent, not the application and not the idea.

Remember the arcade game "space invaders"?? The "software" or "program" to create that game was not a CPU running code but was a large board full of 74xx logic chips, used to create that game.

this shows that all software can be realised in hardware, and often is. Is an ISIG hardware or software ?
Is a CPU hardware or software ?

when it comes down to it, there is no distinction between hardware and software in a computer system, therefore there is no reason to separate hardware and software because of patents, because there is no real distinction between either one, and can use the same METHOD regardless of it it's considered hardware, software or firmware.

Re: Re:

sure, you cant patent a tree, but you can patent a method of using the wood from a tree to achieve some function. You are not patenting something 'natural' you are patenting "A method of using something natural to achieve some function".

You do not patent steam, you patent "A method of using steam to generate power".

Patents like everything that exists require the natural laws of physics for them to perform their specific function, all electric lights follow the physics laws known as Ohms law, you cannot patent those natural laws as they ARE NOT A METHOD TO ACHIEVE A RESULT, but they are the natural physical laws that all things electrical obey. They (rightly) cannot be patented, no more than E=MC2 does not show you how to build an atomic bomb or nuclear power station.

So rightly natural laws cannot and are not patented, because they do not meet the requirements of being "A method of doing something"

SO you can discover natural laws, and underlying physics but you cannot patent those laws, nor do those laws lead you to (necessarily) to invent a method using those laws to achieve a method.

Mr Ohm who discovered ohms law, was no closer to applying that knowledge to the development of the electric light or the method of generating light by means of electricity that is governed by the application of the math of Ohms law.

software is not just the application of maths, it is a method of achieving a specific function using continuously configurable hardware switches. Just as a nuclear power station is not 'just' the application of E=MC2.

You do realise talking about electric lights and switches that your humble room light is a digital computer, a very simple one, but a computer all the same. Yes, it's only a 1 bit binary adder, but with switches and lights you can create a computer that runs "software" (that is actually the position of the switches (the real, physical switches, or relays) performing "SOFTWARE". Not just a mathematical function, but a method or achieving the desired result.

In fact I am sure there is no one on this web site who could turn even the most simple of computer programs into an equivalent mathematical equation.

If you were to intend to make that claim in a Court of law, then you probably would be required to prove your claim that "software is only equations".

Ok, if they are only equations get a include file from a Linux distro, and convert that software into a mathematical equation !!!!

If you understand Boolean logic you know you can turn software into a form of equation but that means you can also realise the Boolean logic in hardware.

but that means nothing regarding it's patentability, you can realise an electric light using physics and ohms laws equations as well, but that does not create a light bulb.

you can create software into equations (with great difficulty, to impossibly for anything requiring indeterminate input data, (such as human interaction). But the equation alone will not make your computer work or your function realised. But your patented invention might.

Academic Compensation

But this is a perfect way of ensuring that academic compensation is linked to learning. Here's the model: math professors get no salary. Instead, when a professor writes a final, and then patents the answers. He then finds all correct answers to be in violation of his patents, and withholds the final grade until royalties have been paid. The students therefore only have to pay for what the professor succeeded in teaching!

Re: Re: Re: Re:

"you cannot patent 'a calculator'"

Well, there is a patent for the Linke button. There's a patent for a "Dynamic progress marking icon" (progress bar), a "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network" (one-click buying) and an "Internet test-taking method". See more here: https://www.eff.org/patent-busting

Re: Re: whole genome shotgun sequencing

Re: Re: Lying Collectivists argument

He patented the tungsten filament electric vacuum light bulb, and before that...guess what...it was gas or oil generated...

Quick science experiment:
Take a bit of steel wool and a small 9 volt battery, and stick the nodes to the bulb in a vacuum environment. Burns really quickly. Try it with Tungsten filament...lasts for days in a vacuum :-)

Re: Re: Re:

Crazy but Cool!

This article is so informative! I learned so many things from this crazy but cool post. I think patenting an idea is not that bad. What makes it not great, is if this never creates income afterall. What's the use of it? Such ideas will remains such mathematical equations which are never put into actions. If one inventor wants to make his incredible idea work, creating a business plan or a marketing study would be absolutely great for having it patented.

Crazy idea of the math

The Pythagoreans (Before Christ) knew that 1+3+5+7+...will result in a square. In 100 AD, nicomachus of Gerasa found out that the cubes also obeyed a law which is the sum of positive odd whole numbers. Since then, no human being has been able to find a general law for nth powers. In 1984 I used a part of this law in my micro-teaching lesson at the Kenya Technical Teachers College in Nairobi.This law proves Fermat's Last Theorem in about 4 pages as opposed to Prof. Wiles' which uses 200 pages. Any publisher will run for it and pay handsomely.So I don't understand why I should not patent it?

Crazy idea of the math

Re: Re: Re:

True, a tree is natural and so are numbers. A formula however just like timber is not natural. It is doesn't exist in nature until it is formulated by someone. We don't naturally see a formula, do we? We plane a tree to see timber, and so also do we arrange numbers to see a formula. It can take centuries for one to figure out the arrangement that gives a particular formula. The numbers exist, but the arrangement does not.

It should not be the software or logarithm or any math formula that is or should be patentable. These are just tools--a means to an end, however, the means to an end is part of the end. In other words nothing is not discoverable if not from something else. Ideas are as obvious and already in existence as are mathematical formulas that have not been discovered. It is not just the software that makes it novel, but the process in which it is used for. If you cannot patent a math formula because it already is in existence than too it should also be that all ideas are not patentable and can be proven to be in existence by the obviousness rule that, too, is walking a tight rope. However, one could argue that if it was obvious why than hasnâ€™t it been used to produces a new result. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to allow the discovery of new math to be patented as long as it is in conjunction with and promotes a novel idea. It should only be patentable with the median in which it is submitted which promotes its use in other medians. Isnâ€™t this how to stimulate the progress of ideas rather than stifling the process of discovering.